


Little Boy Blue and the Man in the Moon (Baby!Bae and Papa!Rumple Childhood Memories Drabbles)

by PersephoneTree



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Baby!Bae and Papa!Rumple being cute, Childhood, Drabble, Drabble Collection, Gen, Rumple is the Best Dad Ever, Well He Was Once
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-02-21 21:13:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2482646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersephoneTree/pseuds/PersephoneTree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What it says on the tin. A collection of drabbles about Bae's early childhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Laugh

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cobblestoner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobblestoner/gifts).



            The first time Rumple hears his son laugh, he almost cries. He has never heard a more beautiful sound. He wastes the better part of the afternoon making silly faces over Bae’s crib, until Milah comes home from town and browbeats him for not finishing the day’s work. But Bae is red-faced and hiccupping with laughter, and even his wife’s harshest words cannot hurt him.

            The next morning, when he leans over the crib, Bae looks up into his face and lets out a pleased giggle of recognition. “Ba!” he burbles, delightedly, and Rumple gathers him into his arms with a cry of joy.


	2. First Steps

            “Come on, Bae, you can do it! Nearly there!”

            Baelfire regards his father warily from across the hut, lower lip pushed out in a frown. He can sense the tension in the air between them. It holds him frozen, one hand clutching the low table for support.

            Finally, tentatively, he lifts one foot and takes a careful step forward. The ground stays solid beneath him. He finds his balance and then, slowly, lets go of the table.

            “That’s it, Bae, come on now.”

            Bae looks up into the face across from him, warm and proud and beaming, and his fear melts away. Another step and suddenly he is stumbling as fast as his short legs can manage into his father’s waiting arms.

            “That’s my boy,” Rumple crows as he swings his 10-month-old son high into the air. “I knew you could do it!”


	3. Shameful

            The villagers knew Rumple Stiltskin was a coward. They knew the shameful truth behind his lame right leg, though no one spoke it aloud. For many months they averted their eyes when he passed, to let him know that they knew, and the goodwives whose husbands had never returned from the wars sniggered and made cruel comments on the sly, and pitied poor Milah for bearing such a burden.

            But Baelfire changed all that.

            Once the babe was weaned, it seemed to the villagers that Milah was seen less and less, and the child's care fell entirely to his father, who took to carrying his son about in a sling across his chest. Baelfire was a beautiful babe, bright-eyed and plump, smiling at the world, and the villagers soon found they could not help but smile back. It was evident to all that Rumple Stiltskin doted on the boy, and the selfsame wives who'd scorned and mocked him began stopping him in the road to chuck Baelfire under the chin and offer tidbits of advice towards his care.

            “Shameful,” the women would exclaim to each other after, as they gathered at the well, “how that wife of his carries on! The poor man must be father and mother both to the lad.”


	4. Lullaby

            The fire crackles as Milah bends to stoke it, dry bark snapping as it catches flame. The noise isn't enough to drown out Bae's shrieks.

            “Can't you keep him quiet!" she snaps over her shoulder.

            Her husband shoots her a hurt look, but he stops tickling the boy and Bae quiets, his screeching laughter subsiding with a soft little sigh. Milah turns back to the fire and prods it fiercely with the iron, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney.

            It isn't fair. By rights a child should love its mother best. But even she can't deny the way her own son's eyes light up when his father enters the room. He has never looked at her that way. And he fusses when she holds him, now, like she's a perfect stranger.

            Behind her, Rumple begins to croon the lullaby he sings to Bae each night. Milah drops the poker and reaches for her cloak. She mutters a hasty excuse about more firewood, and turns her face away as she sweeps past father and son.

            Their song follows her out the door, all the way to the woods.


	5. Chastisement

            Baelfire is four years old when he first witnesses a father hit his child.

            It is not an unusual thing, in the Enchanted Forest, for children to be punished with a spanking. But to Bae, the sight of his friend Petrel wailing in pain across his father’s knee is as strange and eye-opening as the birthing of the spring lambs.

            That evening he lies on his cot and watches the spinning wheel’s spokes twirl in the firelight. His father’s hands are sure and steady at their work, as gentle with the twisting wool as they ever are with Bae himself.

            As hard as Bae tries, he cannot imagine those hands doing what Petrel’s father’s did.


	6. Teeth

            When Bae’s teething cries wake them for the third night in a row, Milah goes for the flask of corn whiskey she keeps for her headaches. It is a remedy many mothers swear by, she says. But Rumple remembers a father whose breath reeked of spirits, and knocks aside the whiskey-soaked rag his wife proffers Bae.

            He lifts the screaming infant from his cradle and sits with him by the dying fire. Bae’s small face is mottled and wet with tears; his gums grind together as he sucks in a breath for a fresh wail. Rumple’s teeth ache in sympathy with his boy’s torment.

            “Give him the rag,” Milah orders from the bed. “He needs something to chew on.”

            Instead, Rumple turns his back to her and slides the tip of his finger into Bae’s mouth. Toothless baby gums clamp down around it, gnashing furiously. Wide brown eyes, lashes still wet with tears, look up and up into Rumple’s own.

            Bae hiccups twice, and then falls quiet.

            In bed, Milah breathes a sigh of relief and rolls over. When she next wakes, it is morning, and Rumple is still sitting by the hearth, one finger trapped between his sleeping son’s lips.


End file.
